A big first for us: he had a play date with a new friend/family – not just family or someone we know through work.
He was up about 5:50: “Where’s mama?” Downstairs they got the heart model out to play with. He played with his bassoon and was humming a tune and asked if it was another mystery song. It was “She’ll be coming around the mountain”. He then was a fancy music machine with lasers and tubes and different levels. As Carly was leaving he sang a little “I love you too” song. Carly has an in-service day and I asked if she might be coming home early. August very politely asked if she could come home early. He then watched Timmy Time. After that he started making up games on the couch: “It’s impossible for my rockets not to destroy all the things that are scary.” “I haven’t use-d my rockets in quite awhile.” So then he had me finding monsters in the cracks in the couch: “But I heard some gurgling noises in there…In there. Go investigate.”
He and I then made banana bread. We got that in the oven, the ndid some Duplos. He said “I’m making a gravitational force thing.” “It’s in the tractor museum but you can still see how it works.” He played the mystery song on his comb. “Could you find that song? It’s on my playlist. I love that song…well soon. Solve that mystery. Why do I love mysteries?”
I took a shower, then gave him a bath. We took out the banana bread and waited for it to to cool a little, then had some. He told me”I discovered that when I eat popcorn I drink lots of water.”
We left at 9:25. Along the way he asked me “How can captains steer ships and hold cutlasses if they’re very, very sharp?” We also talked about Pluto and its planet status. He asked “Does it matter what I call Pluto?” He decided to call it a planet. This is a result of the Story Pirates story about how Pluto was sad when it was called a drawl planet.
We got to Bar’s house at 10. They live a block north of the Even Yehuda library. Bar let us in. They started out okay, and I talked to Ayelet, her mother, a bit. Bar gave him a vitamin C that he really liked. They played downstairs with the kitchen stuff. Then it was upstairs to the main floor. They watched some of the Troll movie and had snacks. Bar had some white chocolate chips and made him eat veggies to earn them. He had one piece of cucumber, then I got the carrots I had brought for him, as he didn’t like the peppers or tomatoes. But then ther were also those wafer cookie things with chocolate in them and he had a few of those. We had met Bar’s brother, Ben, who is in kindergarten. He has an extensive Lego collection and likes to keep them in sets. So touching the Legos was out of the question. August wasn’t too interested in them though. But there was also a set of magnetized building block things. Ben showed us a barn he had made out of them, but then also said we couldn’t play with that.
One of Ben’s friends came over, Diane, I think, and I got to use a little Korean with her dad. August liked the big TV and at one point told me “We should buy one of those”. But he lost interest in the movie and wanted to play with other things. We played with those magnet things, building a second building: “I call it a barn that was really old and the animals died.” Bar came and played with him a bit. I had made a hat of sorts out of this clay stuff they had, and Bar came and put it on his head. He said “Im listening to the sea.”
Bar then with her dad went upstairs and got upset about something. August wanted to go up and check on her, but then her brother told us that we should leave her alone when she is upset and that she had once scratched him. August then got upset – I’m not entirely sure why (because he had been told he couldn’t go upstairs, or that she might hurt him) – and I had to pick him up. He told me “You shouldn’t have bringed-ed me here!”
But then they both calmed down, and Bar took August upstairs. I had been talking to Moshe earlier during snacks/troll time. Now talked to Ayelet for awhile. But after awhile I heard August crying and he came downstairs. Bar had decided they were going to take a nap, and had changed him into Ben’s pajamas – even changed his underwear. But the shirt was too much, it turned out. He doesn’t like us putting shirts on, and he really doesn’t like them getting stuck on his head. When he calmed down he told me “I didn’t want to change my clothes. I’m used to mine.” Bar brought down a big elephant and giraffe, and they watched more troll movie.
They went downstairs and played with a light thing in the dark. Then it was lunch time, but August refused to eat anything. He had had so many snacks I wasn’t surprised. He told me “I’m having a little hard time.” But after lunch they all four went downstairs. Ben was in charge as they played chicken tag with the huge balloon chicken left over from Bar’s birthday party, then some sort of other tag. Ben got out snakes and ladders and it was August’s first big kind board game. I helped him, and he was okay with the not winning. It was Bar who wanted to cheat to win and got upset, and her mom took her upstairs. I stayed down with the three remaining kids and they played a hungry hippos sort of game, then Ben threw the marbles around, or hid them, and August and Diane would find them. And somewhere in there August had played with a light up sword and was talking about cutlasses.
August found a new musical instrument – one of those cheap harmonica/keyboard things. And he really liked it. Bar eventually heard it and came down and said it was hers and took it, but August didn’t complain. We went upstairs with her and the two of them sat in a seat together and watched the movie and played with toys. Finally, I dragged him away at 2:50. As we walked he said “Maybe we should visit her two times…just two.”
We stopped at the snakes and ladder playground and played there for awhile. He climbed up into the rope thing and took my hat and wore it. He then found he could climb under the big geometric shapes.
We walked home and were home about 3:40. Warm enough that I opened the windows. They had given us a leftover gift bag from Bar’s birthday: a snakes and ladders game, a pencil, eraser, glitter glue, and a squishy monster toy like he’d played with at her house. I did dishes, and we played a round of snakes and ladders. Carly came home. August was lying on the floor playing with the squishy monster thing and listening to an Ian McNabb song called “You Stole My Soul”. August started singing along but changed the line to “Don’t you kow you stole my sock”. He told me “There’s so many things to post to the blog.”
He did a little glitter glue (and we sharpened the pencil at some point), then ate soup for dinner and had popcorn. He talked about how Ben wasn’t very nice; and how it wasn’t nice to knock down Ben’s toy (he and Bar had knocked down the bard with some fake flowers they were swinging around).
We skyped with my parents for 20 minutes and started to talk about plans for them to visit next year. He and Carly played snakes and ladders. And he told me he always wanted to sleep next to me. When he was tired he wanted me to carry him upstairs. When Carly tried to pick him up he requested I take him. She got him ready, then I went up and said goodnight and left them after 7:15.